


In That Gray Place You Went

by kyluxtrashcompactor



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hot Mess Hux, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-14 22:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8032339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyluxtrashcompactor/pseuds/kyluxtrashcompactor
Summary: Tentatively, eyes still squeezed shut, Hux stretches a hand up, pausing just before he would touch Ren, if he’s actually really there. Before he can make up his mind, he feels Ren’s fingers close over his, and the air leaves Hux’s lungs in a rush. He lets Ren pull him out the chair, and gather him into his arms, and he hides there and wills Ren not to fade, wills himself not to wake up.“I’m here,” Ren whispers, his own voice thick with feeling. “It’s ok now.”





	In That Gray Place You Went

_The air is just like Hux remembers it - saturated with moisture, always three seconds from raining, with the breeze an insistent whisper against his cheeks, lulling him softly while saying nothing. He is sitting on a cliff, and the ocean is far below. The water is metal-dark, violent and angry, surging against the shore and retreating, all with nothing more than a muted susurration._

_He is hemmed in all around by gray. The straggling clouds are so low that tendrils scud against the hillside, obscuring the wheat colored seagrass that undulates like the tide below, and everything smells of wind and water and damp loam._

_It is surreal, as though his soul is hovering in that place between life and death, unsure whether to move on. He tilts his head up, and thinks that if he just stands and stretches out a hand, he could graze the underbelly of the cloud above him and scatter it to wisps, and see what’s on the other side._

_He’s lost in thought, imagining that, and so it takes him a moment to realize he’s not alone. The presence beside him is so familiar, so much a part of him now, that even after he senses it, he is not startled by it._

_Not until he remembers that Ren couldn’t be here._

_Hux turns his head slowly, expecting it to just be a trick of his mind, an illusion of wishful thinking. But it isn’t. Ren is sitting there in the grass beside him, long legs drawn up before him, cowl pulled over his head to obscure his profile. He is like a shadow, seeming to smudge at the edges, and belatedly Hux notices the fabric cloaking him doesn’t flutter in the constant wind._

_Hux holds a hand out, palm up, pleading, and Ren turns his face toward him. His eyes are somber, and his lips move, but Hux can’t hear what he’s saying. And then Ren holds his hand out, but Hux can’t touch him; their fingers pass through each other's’ like water, and_

something shatters. Hux snaps awake, nerves alight and heart thumping. Muscles tense for a fight, it takes him a full fifteen seconds of blinking in the dark of his bedroom to realize where he is. With a voice rough from sleep, he croaks at the auto-lights, and they rise to a tolerable thirty percent.

He’s tangled in the sheets, stiflingly so, and he tears at them with his pulse thick in the hollow of his throat and fingers cold and stiff. When he’s free, he peers over the edge of the bed and sees the water glass that always sits on the side table is smashed in several pieces where he’d batted it against the wall, flailing in his sleep and reaching for Ren.

Drawing his long legs up against his chest, Hux slumps over them, arms folded over his knees, shoving his hands back through his hair in anguish. He remains there, shivering from the memory of the raw climate of Arkanis and the way Ren had looked both real and unreal. It had been four months since he’d started having these dreams, and it was torture. Perhaps it would help if there was ever anything lucid or familiar about them in the moment, so that he could nudge himself into consciousness, and never get to the part where he tried to touch him.

Hux’s fingers curl in his tousled hair, tugging it from the roots and relishing the way the pain makes his eyes prick with tears. Or perhaps it’s not the pain that does that. He stays that way until the alarm on his desk beeps, indicating it’s the beginning of his shift cycle and time for him to play his empty role as General. He is no better than a ghost, and he hasn’t been. Not since Starkiller, not since Ren left for Snoke's citadel.

He taps the alarm off, slips out of bed, and decides to leave the broken glass where it is, because he doesn’t care. His steps to the refresher are sludgy, undecided, and his eyes feel like they weigh a metric-ton in his face; he can feel the circles beneath them, the way the skin is thin and bruised. It is strange, to feel both heavy and empty at once, withdrawn and flying apart at the seams.

The light comes on automatically when he enters the refresher, else he might have showered in the dark. He goes about the obligatory motions like a droid programmed to mimic the man with both responsibilities and purpose, but Hux feels nothing except the burn of the too-hot water. Afterward he stands in front of the mirror and stares at his reflection, not meeting his own eyes, because it makes him ashamed. He considers shaving: the ginger fuzz that had graced his jaw the morning after he and Ren had first parted ways is now a beard, and not particularly well-kept. His cheeks are hollow from poor nutrition, and his skin sallow. Finally he turns away, just like he does every morning.

He doesn’t particularly remember dressing in the uniform that doesn’t quite fit his frame any longer. He doesn’t remember whether he says anything to the crew that he passes on his way to the bridge, but probably not; it’s been a long time since anyone spoke to him without being first addressed. Time seems to contract on itself, with Hux suspended in the haze of it, until it seems only moments later he is back in his quarters at the end of the cycle, shrugging out of his boots and slumping at his desk.

He considers getting a drink, and decides it’s a good idea, but he never actually moves, even though the liquor cabinet is only just there, a few feet away. He might have sat in this manner indefinitely, caught between living and dead, if the trill pulse of his private com hadn’t been so insistent. He’s dragged above the surface by the sound, and with an irritated grunt he pulls the datapad to him and swipes his thumb over it. It comes to life, showing him an alert in red letters at the bottom of the screen. It’s a tracker, in range for his algorithms to detect a location.

Hux’s heart catches in his throat, and he sits upright, shaking fingers drawing open the display so he can see the coordinates superimposed on a map of the local star system. He is still zooming in, further with every touch, when the hydraulics of the door behind him hiss.

Hux freezes, like some small animal caught in the path of a predator, senses reeling. He can’t turn around, because if this is a dream, if he reaches out to touch Ren this time and their fingers cannot find purchase against one another's, he will splinter into a thousand pieces. He is far too tired.

Then there is a weight on his shoulder, and Hux’s eyes slam shut. He feels the definition of fingers, the way they press into the narrow bone and muscle. The way a thumb grazes his neck, skin against skin, leaving a trail of fire. Hux inhales a trembling lungful of air and he can smell him: smoke and metal and leather and _good_.

Tentatively, eyes still squeezed shut, Hux stretches a hand up, pausing just before he would touch Ren, if he’s actually really there. Before he can make up his mind, he feels Ren’s fingers close over his, and the air leaves Hux’s lungs in a rush. He lets Ren pull him out the chair, and gather him into his arms, and he hides there and wills Ren not to fade, wills himself not to wake up.

“I’m here,” Ren whispers, his own voice thick with feeling. “It’s ok now.”

Hux cannot speak. He cannot look at Ren and let him see that he is just an echo of the general he’d been just months ago. A shadow consumed by failure and loneliness and the weakness of his own humanity.

Ren’s palm is warm on the back of Hux’s neck, and suddenly Hux’s fingers are in his hair, and his face is buried in Ren’s neck.

“I needed you,” Hux rasps against his skin.

Ren shifts, untangling an unwilling Hux, and looks at him fully for the first time. Hux whips his head away, surging with irrational anger and a desperate need to flee, but Ren guides him back with gentle fingers on his chin. There is an odd look on Ren’s face - sorrow tinged with doubt.

“I was here,” he says softly, letting go of Hux’s chin to stroke the backs of his fingers across the new beard. A smile tugs at one cheek.

Hux only stares at him, resisting the urge to flinch away. “What do you mean you were here? You were not. You …” He almost says _you chose Snoke over me_ , but stops himself, because he can’t cross that line.

It seems Ren hears it anyway, discomfort flickering across his face. He steps closer, closing their small distance, and captures Hux’s paper-dry lips. All the bitterness and the bone-deep ache drains out of Hux, and his shoulders slump beneath the weariness of having born up so long. He loses himself in the kiss, needing to let go this way, and touches Ren’s face to remember the shape and the softness of it. To remember Ren is his.

Finally, when Hux’s thoughts are no more than weak white noise, Ren speaks, forming the words against Hux’s mouth.

“See? I was with you the whole time.”

Hux opens his eyes, meeting Ren’s with a question.

“I was here with you every night, in that gray place you went. On that hill, overlooking the sea.”

Hux opens his mouth to protest, to say that those dreams had pushed him to the edge, but he realizes in that moment that it was the opposite. They had, perhaps, been his only anchor. He thinks of all the nights he’d sat on that shore, and thought about giving up, only to turn and find Ren by his side.

“What was it that you said every night?” he whispers.

Ren kisses his forehead, smooths back the overlong red hair, as tenderly as though endless months and entropy had not separated them.

“I said you’re going to be ok.”


End file.
